Who is the bravest person ever?

[FunLvnCriminal]

I think that it is the first person to ever try milk!

What do you guys think?

[Snooooopy]

I vote for brave, brave Sir Robin.

[kuroashi]

does "bravest" mean the person who did the stupidest thing and survived?

That'd be me

[Ashtar]

Originally posted by Snooooopy
I vote for brave, brave Sir Robin.

[Jervoise]

What about the first person to eat an egg?

[galen ubal]

The first person to try shark's fin soup - after all, he had to get the fin, first.

[Tranquilis]

Listen to me
I'm sure you'll agree
The bravest man in history
was neither soldier or champion of law
but the first to devour an oyster raw.

[Ashtar]

To post a more serious reply..

Jesus Christ.

Whether you believe he was the Son of God or not--you gotta realize that this was a mere carpenter--a man of humbleness, but with faith so great that he marched willingly to his own death for sake of not just his people, but for all of humanity.

To me--that takes a great amount of bravery.

[Weeks]

the forst person to pick a mushroom out of a turd and eat it.

[Dijon Warlock]

The first person to post an IMHO thread in GQ.

[yojimbo]

Audie Murphy ?

Many not the bravest (there's a lot of people who did stuff that we probably never even heard off) but he must be up there in military terms.

[Jeremy's Evil Twin]

How about Mohammed Atta? Bill Maher thinks so.

I object to the notion that Jesus Christ was "brave". If he truly was the Son of G.O.D., that means he is, in all respects, G.O.D., being part of the Trinity and all...and being omnipotent and omni-everything else, he has unlimited powers. He created the damn universe, something as trivial as hanging on a cross for 3 days would be like crossing the street for most of us.

[peepthis]

In my lifetime, I'd definitely put a vote in for this guy. Though some dissident groups claim he's still alive, he was clearly and unrelentingly putting his life on the line for his cause. But then again so have thousands of others for thousands of causes, but this one happened to be caught on camera.

[flodnak]

You can't measure braveness like you can measure height. There just isn't a single answer to this question.

Just off the top of my head, here are three very brave people from my lifetime:

The young man who stood in front of the tanks at Tienanmen Square.

King Juan Carlos of Spain, who quietly but stubbornly stayed put during a coup attempt in spite of direct threats on his own life.

The man who jumped into the freezing cold Potomac River in his street clothes when one of the few survivors of a plane was too cold to hold on to the rescue buoy that was being lowered from a helicopter.

Just out of those three, can you pick the "bravest" or the "least brave"? And if it's a rough job from just three, how could anyone pick the bravest person in all of history?

[Balor]

We cannot tell who is or was the bravest person ever, for two reasons -

1. Bravery is not fearlessness. If you have no fear of something, you are not brave about it. Bravery is when you are really frightened and in mental or physical pain, and you are facing overwhelming odds which may mean horrible death or dreadful pain. You find within yourself the moral strength to still do what you must. Bravery is easily confused with fearlessness, because both result in great feats. You cannot tell which is which from outside, as bravery is an inner thing.

2. How many people do we remember today? The bravest person ever may have lived 100,000 years ago. Who can tell? It may have been the day little Ug held off the sabre-toothed tiger armed only with his teeth and hands, while the tribe escaped. It did not leave much of Ug, but the tribe ate what was left and honoured his bravery in the eating.

What you really mean is, who was the bravest person we can identify.

Anyway, the bravest man in the world was my dad. He told me so, when i was a kid.

[DrMatrix]

General Questions is for questions with factual answers. IMHO is for opinions and polls.

I'll move this to IMHO for you.

DrMatrix - General Questions Moderator

[galrion]

Sir Richard Francis Burton, the explorer - not the actor. He went all kinds of places. He even went to Mecca at a time when it was death for Westerners. Of course for that he had to well...be circumsized as an adult without the benefit of anasthetic.

[cornflakes]

I'm at least as sick of the World Trade Center hoopla as anybody else, but I have to at least nominate Richard Rescorla, the head of security at Morgan Stanley that day. He ignored WTC security who told him to keep his people put and got all but six of Morgan Stanley's 2,700 people out and was last seen going back up for more. Before this, he was a successful officer in Vietnam, predicted that terrorists would bomb the WTC garage, worked that evacuation and guessed that the next atatck would be by air. I can only wish that my life could be worth as much as his was.

[CrankyAsAnOldMan]

What little I've read about Shackleton makes me want to vote for him. Although.... he had a lot of integrity and common sense mixed in with the bravery, which probably messes it up a bit.

Amelia Earhart was brave, too, thought probably not bravest ever. The guy who climbed Everest blind has to rank up there.

[elf6c]

Check out a list of the Congressional Medal of Honor Awardees, especially those who received the award posthumously.



-me

[World Eater]

I was gonna say Steve McQueen in "The Towering Inferno"

[Duke]

Originally posted by kuroashi
does "bravest" mean the person who did the stupidest thing and survived?

That'd be me

OK, I'll bite. Whad'ya do?

[don't ask]

I'd give a vote to Jake Powell.

Yankee outfielder Jake Powell, in a 1938 radio interview, made a racially offensive remark, which caused an uproar. As part of his penance, Powell went to Harlem by himself after dark, walked into bar after bar, announced who he was, and bought everyone a drink.

FromElysian Fields

[LifeWillFall]

As far as bravery goes I'd have to move Jesus pretty low on the list of most brave. Lots of people have sacrificed themselves for a cause, but he did it knowing it would save all humanity, it's that's what you believe at least. It seems to me it wouldn't be so hard to die knowing you are saving everyone else ever to come.

[sleestak]

I agree with some others that Jesus doesn't quite qualify for the OP. I think bravery should be defined by people willingly putting themselves into dangerous situations to help others without reward. Jesus, OTOH, knew or believed that he was the son of G.O.D. and therefore thought he had a pass into heaven.

I think it is impossible to pick "the bravest" person. There are many types of bravery. Cops, firemen-persons(what is the P.C. term for them???) and military personal knowingly go into harms way for others. At the same time the Chinese guy who stood up to the tanks is a good choice. So is the Russian scientist, Sakarov(SP?), who spoke out against the USSR's regime knowing that he would end up in a gulag. Also, a rape survivor talking about the ordeal is brave.

Heck, I was in a situation once where I was called 'Brave'. I didn't think about it that way. In fact I just did what I thought was right. I think most people who do the right things aren't thinking about their reps. They are probably just doing what they think is right.

Slee

[Jeep's Phoenix]

Originally posted by Jeremy's Evil Twin
How about Mohammed Atta?

Not in a million years.

[Badtz Maru]

I think bravery requires three things and can be measured by the extent of them - you have to risk a fate you are afraid of, the risk has to be high, and you have to have made a real choice to end up in that situation. We just have to think of extremes in these categories.

First, what is one of the worst things that can happen to you? Death is pretty high up there, but not at the top of the list except maybe under certain circumstances. Extreme torture would be higher, as would losing not only your life but those of your loved ones or perhaps your entire community.

Second factor can vary a lot too - the person who is brave when the consequences are not certain or very likely isn't as brave as when the dire fate is a bigger risk. As an example, if some anonymous person threatened to kill me if I did something my standing up to them would not be as brave as if the person threatening me was standing there with the gun to my head and I knew that they were not bluffing (i.e. they just killed someone in front of me). In the first scenario I can take steps to reduce the risk from the person making threats - notify the police that someone is threatening to kill me, move somewhere safer, etc.

Third factor comes up a lot too, eliminating in my view instances of supposed bravery that are often lauded as being very brave. For instance, a Jew in Nazi Germany who chooses to fight instead of cooperating when they come for him does not fit this third criteria of bravery if he knows what his fate in the camp is likely to be - either way he's going to die. The model Aryan citizen who chooses to assist Jews in escaping is braver because he is choosing to risk death when he could just sit out the situation safely. Religious beliefs come into this as well in a number of ways. A person who truly believes that he is going to suffer eternal damnation upon his death is a lot braver when he risks his life than someone who is sure they are going to Heaven. This is why religious zealots who refuse to renounce their beliefs even under torture are not necessarily brave - their choices are between temporary torture now followed by eternal happiness or ending the temporary pain but condemning yourself to far worse. They weren't brave, they were just choosing the lesser of two evils in their minds.

So, by combining these three we can get an idea what the most brave person did. They chose to risk a certain fate far worse than death that they truly dreaded when they could have easily avoided it without negative personal consequences, either physical or spiritual. Lots of candidates, not sure who should top it, but if we are including fictional characters my votes for Satan.

[kuroashi]

OK, seriously

Rafael Perez

blew the whistle on bad cops in LA as a cop himself, and then went to jail. Is he even still alive?

[Michael Ellis]

Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness.


What?

[False_God]

The first person who decided oysters were edible.

Or the first man who gave an honest answer to the following questions:

"What are you thinking right now?"

"Do I look fat in these pants?"

"Do you think my sister/best friend is sexy?"

[NardoPolo]

The bravest person in the world right now is the woman who is still pushing after many hours of labor.

[dropzone]

Originally posted by Michael Ellis
Bruce Campbell in Army of Darkness.

Anybody who SAT THROUGH Army of Darkness.

As an example of military courage, I'd like to second Audie Murphy. That his Medal of Honor was not awarded posthumously is amazing. If he had any thought or expectation of survival as he covered the retreat of his men against an overwhelming enemy it wasn't really based in reality, but it's hard to beat a .50 cal. machine gun for raising your spirits. And as much as I respect the sacrifice of those fellows who got their medals saving their buddies by jumping on grenades (seemingly a cliche, but there were a lot of 'em), I am especially fond of the ones like Murphy who did more than commit suicide.

An example of a brave German speaking out against the evils of Nazism at the cost of his life is Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

[carlotta]

This white girl has always thought that the black children and teenagers who integrated schools in the south were very very brave indeed.

[capacitor]

The guy who first ate the 'poisonous' tomato--and survived. Sauce was never the same.

The guy blocking a line of tanks near Tiannemen Square in Beijing, that was kind of brave.

[Jeremy's Evil Twin]

Originally posted by Jeep's Phoenix


Not in a million years.

Thanks for misquoting me. I was making a smartass remark about that smartass remark that Bill Maher got in trouble for.

[Ike Witt]

Originally posted by Jeremy's Evil Twin
How about Mohammed Atta? Bill Maher thinks so.

How about the passengers of flight 93? JET, I realize that you aren't actually picking Atta.